Electronics

As many readers out there may know, I am a strong proponent of cycling and energy conservation initiatives. Although I usually ride a traditional or “regular” bicycle, I have also recently constructed an electric bicycle. My intention was to consider using the electric bicycle for trips where the time spent commuting needed to be minimized. In other words, for those days that I felt lazy, how late could I sleep in each morning, yet still arrive at work on time if traveling by bicycle? Continue Reading

If you have a fish tank, you know how important it is to remember to feed your fish. Often in our busy, hectic lifestyles, we can forget to do simple tasks, such as dropping in a few flakes or pellets of fish food to take care of our pet fish. It often isn’t intentional, but can easily happen due to oversight. Compounding this problem in households with multiple people is the question of whether someone else has fed the fish that day. If you add in small children, it is easy to overfeed a pet fish. The solution to these issues is a simple Fish Feeding Tracker! Continue Reading

Our local high school has a drum line that provides the community with an outstanding indoor performance each year. Yes, you read that correctly. An indoor performance. As in, one million decibels of drumming in a closed auditorium. Well, it is actually a full band concert, but the drum line steals the show. It’s a blast, and I was asked to come up with some unique lighting for the drummers this year. Continue Reading

This project was one of the more enjoyable projects that I’ve worked on in a long time. Instead of taking the easy way out and displaying the current weather conditions on a web site or cell phone, this project focused on simplicity. Minimal information, displayed in a visually appealing non-screen format. This project makes use of several d’Arsonval meters and a Particle Core microcontroller to view the current weather and forecast at a glance. Continue Reading

Our first generation robotic lawn mower wasn’t the complete success that we hoped it would be. It started off simple enough, as a remote controlled lawn mower, using a hobby RC controller and some used wheelchair motors. With some simple steel framing, the lawn mower was durable, easy to drive, and worked surprisingly well for a remote controlled mower. Well, it was a little hard to steer in a straight line. That’s why I added a GPS. However, when I attempted to add the GPS and inertial guidance functionality to see if it would operate autonomously, it failed miserably. Although it would navigate to preset waypoints, it would only find one waypoint on the North side of lawn, and one waypoint on the South side. Obviously, this wouldn’t be sufficient to operate as an autonomous lawn mower. The goal here was not a random pattern, but a parallel path mowed lawn. Continue Reading

We were only about one month into the 2013 lawn mowing season when we decided that we had had enough. Mowing the lawn wasn’t fun. It’s hot, dirty, smelly work that is better left to someone, or something else. We decided right then and there that we needed to make a robotic lawn mower. One that could be controlled by remote control, or if we were adventurous enough, one that was fully autonomous.

We had only one requirement for this project. The robotic lawn mower would need to mow in a pattern similar to how a human would mow – with straight lines. A lawn mower that operated like a Roomba in a crazy, random pattern was not going to work. We planned to start with an existing lawn mower, modify it for remote control, and then eventually include an inertial guidance system and microprocessor to allow it to mow on its own. Continue Reading

Now that we have our first nixie tube clock built, it was time to step it up a little and make something a little more challenging. Nixie tubes, using a glow discharge instead of LCD or LED displays, have an old world charm to them, yet can be made to operate similar to a modern display. The plan here was to pair these tubes with a nice wooden clock case, made using the CNC machine. The end result is something that has a warm wooden feel to it, with a colorful numeric display which is both attractive and, when used with a GPS for accurate time setting, highly functional as well. Continue Reading

A voltage-based sensor can be used to monitor the charge of the battery. Over a typical day, the battery voltage should rise as the solar panel charges the battery, and then discharge at night while the Raspberry Pi consumes power from the battery. A common technique for monitoring voltage is to use a voltage divider. If appropriate resistances are chosen for the voltage divider circuit, the drain on the battery from the sensor is negligable.

Another option is to use a current sensor. A current sensor placed off of one of the battery terminals will measure how much current is flowing into or out of the battery. Continue Reading

While browsing one of our favorite electronic supplier’s web sites, we found that Ladyada sells a really interesting looking clock that uses a vacuum florescent display with eight glowing digits. This clock proved to be an excellent soldering instruction project for a younger Rusty Nail Workshop helper.

The most interesting feature is the display, which is similar to those found on VCRs, old car radios, and microwave ovens. The vacuum florescent display was invented in 1967 in Japan and hundreds of millions are used annually around the world. They are different than an LCD in that they use a filament to emit electrons which are diffused by grids. The electrons strike a phosphor-coated plate and emit light, and can be manufactured to emit light in different colors. Continue Reading

For Halloween this year, my boys decided they wanted to be a Jawa from Star Wars. One of the requirements was that they have glowing eyes. Not just any glowing eyes, but orange glowing eyes. This is how I created some realistic Jawa eyes with just a few dollars of materials.

First, to get the orange glow, I purchased some high intensity orange LEDs (part number 404-1097-ND) from Digi-Key. They were only $0.71 each. I also purchased a 9-volt battery clip (part number BS12I-HD-24AWG-ND) for $0.33. To control the current going to the LEDs, I purchased a 500 ohm potentiometer (part number 3386W-501LF-ND) for $1.29. Continue Reading

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